Disappearances from asylum centers, the new EU security breach

A staggering number of asylum seekers are disappearing from accommodation centers in Western Europe, and this phenomenon, long treated as a minor administrative dysfunction, has now become one of the most serious security and governance breaches in the European Union, according to an article published by the German news website Welt. The disappearance of these people from the official system does not only mean the loss of their administrative traceability, but also generates chain effects that directly affect public safety: increasing the risk of opportunistic crime, feeding human trafficking networks and, in extreme cases, increasing exploitable vulnerabilities, including by extremist or terrorist networks. The scale of the phenomenon can no longer be ignored, especially when put in relation to the magnitude of migratory flows in recent years.

From the analysis of existing data at European level that I conducted following the article published by the cited source, I noted that in the period 2022-2024 the European Union recorded, according to Eurostat, approximately 2.83 million asylum applications filed for the first time: 873,700 in 2022, 1,048,900 in 2023 and 911,960 in 2024. In 2024 alone, the total number of asylum applications, including repeated applications, reached 996,815, which means almost one million people entered a national or European reception, procedure and control system.

Added to this picture is an unprecedented phenomenon: since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, EU states have granted temporary protection to approximately 6.8 million refugees from that country, who did not enter the classic asylum procedure, but became part of the European social and administrative infrastructure. In parallel, the pressure at the external borders remained constantly high: Frontex reported around 380,000 irregular crossings detected in 2023 and over 239,000 in 2024, to which is added another over 133,000 in the first nine months of 2025 alone, according to a report recently published by Eurostat.

In this massive numerical context, the problem of disappearances in asylum centers takes on a different weight. Germany offers one of the clearest recent examples, according to journalists from Welt. Thus, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, between July 2024 and the end of 2025, 923 people were officially reported missing from reception centers, out of a total of 10,120 people accommodated in that period, which means a rate of over 9%. In administrative terms, disappearance is defined extremely loosely: an absence of more than three days is enough for a person to be declared missing from the reception system. The centers are not detention facilities, and freedom of movement is guaranteed, but the practical effect is the same: a person who has entered the system legally becomes, from one moment to the next, invisible to the authorities. At the federal level, consolidated data indicate thousands of asylum seekers missing from the records of the states, and the phenomenon is not limited to Germany, but is found, with methodological variations, in almost all Western European states subject to migratory pressure, according to the cited source.

This "evaporation” from the system creates a critical gap in the migration management chain. When authorities no longer know where a person is, they can no longer complete the asylum procedure, apply a return decision in the event of a rejected application, and assess individual security risks. The European Commission implicitly acknowledges this problem when it talks about the need to reduce the risk of deliberate evasion of procedures and strengthen tracing and return mechanisms. The fact that, at EU level, the effective return rate of people without a right to stay has remained around 20% for years shows that disappearances from centres are not a marginal accident, but a strategy to avoid the system, tolerated by its dysfunctions. The grey area created by these disappearances is fertile ground for crime. People who leave asylum centres generally lose access to accommodation, material support and a clear legal framework. In the absence of a stable status, they are pushed into the informal economy, illegal work, document forgery, petty theft or other forms of subsistence crime. Worse, administrative invisibility turns them into ideal targets for human trafficking networks, which exploit precisely the lack of protection, fear of authorities and legal precariousness. This mechanism is also recognized by the European institutions, which constantly warn about the link between irregular migration, disappearances from the system and criminal exploitation.

The most dramatic dimension of the phenomenon is that involving minors. Analyses synthesized by the European Parliament show that, between 2021 and 2023, at least 51,433 unaccompanied migrant minors were reported missing in Europe. We are basically talking about children who entered protection systems created specifically for them and who subsequently disappeared without being able to be located, in a continent that claims high standards of child protection. These disappearances are not simple "voluntary departures", but strong indications of networks of trafficking, sexual exploitation or forced labor, which rely precisely on the cracks in the asylum systems.

The topic of terrorism must also be addressed, especially since Europol reports show that the terrorist threat in the EU is complex and multifaceted, and the vast majority of asylum seekers have no connection to violent extremism. However, from a security perspective, the existence of masses of completely unidentified, unlocated and out of any official procedure represents, in itself, a vulnerability. The grey areas are where criminal networks and, in rare cases, radicalized actors can operate. The risk does not stem from migrant or refugee status, but from the state's failure to maintain traceability and procedural control. This is precisely why the EU is expanding and strengthening systems such as Eurodac to better track irregular movements and multiple identities within the Union. In essence, the European Union is faced with a dangerous paradox: it manages flows of millions of people, but accepts that tens of thousands disappear from its systems every year, without real consequences. Each missing person represents a double failure, of protection and of control. For society, this failure translates into insecurity, political polarization and loss of trust in institutions. For those who have disappeared, it means exposure to exploitation, criminality and marginalization. And for the European project, the stakes are even higher: the credibility of a system that claims order, solidarity and respect for the rule of law, but which, in practice, allows people, including children, to become invisible within it. If this gap is not closed through coherent, consistently applied and coordinated procedures at European level, the risks associated with disappearances in asylum centres will continue to increase, with the social, political and security costs for the entire Union increasing.